| McCain: Investigate Voter Fraud in Battleground States |
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| Ohio News | |||
| Written by John Michael Spinelli | |||
| Saturday, 11 October 2008 18:28 | |||
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Columbus, Ohio: At a campaign rally in Wisconsin last week, Republican candidate for president John S. McCain called for an immediate investigation into whether allegations that voter fraud in various battleground states is true or false. In recent days, news of allegations by Republicans that ACORN, a national umbrella group whose members represent low income and minority populations, has engaged in voter fraud has become a battle cry for McCain supporters who see their candidate falling further behind Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for president. The issue of voter fraud, the Gold Standard of election issues that Republicans traditionally escort to center stage in the waning weeks before elections they fear losing, as they do this year, caused Sen. McCain last week to say that such allegations must be investigated promptly. Responding to the issue, John McCain told his supporters this:
By his own standards then, it seems McCain should ask his campaign computer wizard Mike Connell to step forward and tell the world what he knows about whether computer systems he has worked on or is working on will lead to voter fraud this year. Connell, who has been a computer handy man for the Bush Family for decades, was served a subpoena recently. His Columbus defense attorneys have told head plaintiff attorney Clifford O. Arnebeck and the Office of Ohio Attorney General and the Office of Ohio Secretary of State that Connell's busy schedule prevents him from coming forward before the election. From McCain's nearly three decades in public office, he should know that voter fraud comes in many forms. One of those forms, made possible by the age of computers, can both game or outright steal an election. With Election Day hurtling toward us with unstoppable certainty, and with McCain's strong call that such allegations of voter fraud be assessed before Election Day so Americans won't have any doubt that election results are fair and accurate, it would behoove the Arizona Senator, who claims he always puts his country first, to demonstrate that commitment by advising Mr. Connell, who cam to McCain from the Bush White House, to provide a little straight talk of his own about whether Ohio's election system, or the election system of any other state he is aware of, is rigged to go off when elections are close, beyond the automatic recount but within the statistical margin of error. To read about Mr. Connell, his relationship to the Bush Family, the current White House and his transition to the McCain Campaign, this link provides a spray of articles for content and content. Three other portals, here and here and here, are also worthwhile sources on this big but under-covered story about the safety and integrity of American elections. Voter Fraud FeverAs for the brouhaha in Ohio over issues ranging from absentee ballots to voter registration when votes will be cast or counted, the action by the sheriff of Greene County, one of Ohio's 88 counties located between Dayton and Cincinnati, to confiscate voter registration forms in response to allegations that they were fraudulent has hit the headlines. The AP reported that an Ohio sheriff who asked for information on 300 voters who registered and cast ballots on the same day during a week-long period between the beginning of absentee voting and the deadline to register to vote was withdrawn. Greene County Sheriff Gene Fischer, who said he "received concerns about possible voter fraud in the county," was met with stiff protests from Democrats the American Civil Liberties Union and a coalition of voting rights groups. The Republican sheriff of a county with five colleges and universities, including two historically black colleges, said his request was no longer needed because a federal judge ruled that Brunner, a Democrat and a women, must come up with a system to alert counties to mismatches. But in a reversal of that opinion, an appeals court ruled that Brunner doesn't have to give that information to counties. The three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Brunner is not required to provide county elections boards with the names of voters whose personal information does not match state motor-vehicle or federal Social Security records. In addition to Social Security, the database of the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles is also used for match-ups. A report by The New York Times that claimed "tens of thousands of eligible voters" in at least six swing states, including Ohio, have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law was news worthy. The Times concluded that Ohio and three other states, Indiana, Nevada and North Carolina, seem to be "improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters." The Social Security Administration, working with the US Justice Department, said it sent letters to Ohio reminding them that election officials comply with federal law. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio's most populace, ACORN came under scrutiny by the local board of election for registration falsification, as it seems to have done in 11 other states. ACORN and Project Vote, an allied group, responded in a conference call with reporters to the allegations. The group, headquartered in Las Vegas, the scene of raid by law enforcement officers, said that recent attacks against them into the context of a long history of voter suppression efforts intended to silence the voices of minority and low-income Americans. Various group leaders said their voter registration drive signed up 1.3 million new voters and "is under partisan attacks." They offered detailed information about their voter registration process, addressed their relationship and links to other organizations, discussed their work in housing and mortgage issues, emphasized that they do not receive federal government funding in their voter registration drives, and discussed their important work in advocacy for historically underrepresented populations - minority, low-income, and young populations and communities, as stated in their media release. As allegations fly from Republicans that voter fraud has been committed in the group's voter registration drives in several states, Ohio Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner called for federal funding for ACORN to be stopped. The Congressman from Cincinnati said ACORN and Project Vote, which teamed up for an aggressive voter registration in 16 states including Ohio, should be banned from receiving any further money from Washington. An ACORN spokesman said the group receives no federal funding for its election drives. But another Congressman, this one from Chicago, the home of Barack Obama, said the attacks are a direct result of the 1.3 million voters ACORN and Project Vote registered this year. Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., son of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, a confidant of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, wrote a rebuttal to the allegations at The Huffington Post. Jackson, born in 1965 during the height of the tumultuous civil rights movement that produced the watershed Civil Rights Act of 1965, not only defended the groups under fire, but thanked them for trying to include "more poor people in a more perfect union." Included in the 1.3 million voters registered by ACORN and Project Vote, 247,335 of them, the most of any of the 18 states making up their drive. About the author
John Michael Spinelli is a former Ohio State house government and political reporter and business columnist. He now serves as the OhioNews Bureau Chief for ePluribus Media Journal. Find ONB archives here. Photo credits: (c) 2008 AnHarris, istockphoto
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